David Trebacz Blog

Just replaced the bulb on my Samsung 50" DLP TV this week. We were watching a movie, when we heard a large "pop" come from the DLP TV and the screen went black. Every few minutes we'd hear a "clicking" sound out of the TV, so I unplugged it and got online. My wife freaked out a bit. We bought it in 2004, so it's almost exactly 5 years old at this point. I guess that's the life I would have expected out of the bulb. I was pleased to see that the replacement bulbs had come down in price significantly from when we bought the TV. I bought the bulb from discount-merchant.com for $120 and normal shipping charges (also found a coupon code "fiveoff" for $5 off my order): http://www.discount-merchant.com/Samsung-BP96-00826A-Lamp-Enclosure-p/samsung-bp96-00826a-lamp-enc.htm The company sounded a bit like a shady internet business, but the more research I did -the more comfortable I got with them. I decided to buy the whole assembly for the e...

At least I'm not alone in the fact that my Motorola Droid keeps loosing my Microsoft Exchange email account periodically. I have personally lost the exchange account 4 times (and the other IMAP accounts under the email application). Putting in the credentials again "fixes it". The frequency has gone up since the upgrade to Android 2.0.1. During the entire time the gmail mail accounts are fine. Here are a few of the posts that I'm tracking relating to the issue. No official word from Google, Motorola, or Verizon on the problem -or a pending fix. Reports on Google's Android forum: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=4866 http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=4980 Reports on Verizon's droid forum: http://forums.verizon.com/t5/Android-Devices/Email-accounts-being-deleted-from-Droid/td-p/117067;jsessionid=32c7704020432f772a7cfec1677f7fd52 Reports on Motorola's message forum: http://supportforums.motorola.com/message/89501 I...

Decided today was the day to set up USB tethering on my Motorla Droid running Android 2.0. I'm getting ready for a business trip and I'm always amazed at the places that you can't get a wireless connection. USB tethering allows me to always have a fallback cellular connection (usually 3G on Verizon's network) for those type of emergencies. I love the products produced by June Fabrics. I used their product to intermittently tether my Windows Treo 700W -and it got me out of some odd jams. Essentially it was it's like using your cell phone as a 3G modem (without having to carry separate devices).  June Fabrics couldn't make the process any simplier: Download the install application from  http://www.junefabrics.com/android/ Begin installing the application -the installer walks you through all the steps nicely. I did need to enable a setting to allow the application to be automatically pushed form the Windo...